President Obama’s economic team is exhausted, according to White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, and that is one the reasons Christina Romer announced her departure Thursday.

Gibbs dismissed reports that Romer, the outgoing chairwoman of the president’s council for economic affairs, was leaving because of conflicts with Larry Summers, the director of the National Economic Council.

The press secretary told The Hill on Friday that Romer and the rest of the economic team have worked the equivalent of six years during the 18 months they’ve been in office, and Romer wanted to return to her normal life.

“These guys have probably packed a term and a half into a half of a term,” Gibbs said.

Romer is the second member of the economic team to leave this summer. She follows Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget.

The early days of the administration alone were enough to wear the team down, he said, as they realized the depth of the recession.

“If you think about what we went through in the beginning, nobody knew when we woke up if the whole thing was just going to come crashing down,” Gibbs said.

[If one listens carefully, one can hear a shrill, whiny voice screaming, “It’s all Bush’s fault Romer is resigning!”].

Romer was involved in the administration’s planning of the $787 billion economic stimulus package. Ever since the legislation was approved by Congress, she’s been at the forefront of the administration’s effort to sell the product to the public.

That’s been difficult given the fact that the nation’s unemployment rate soared to 10 percent after the legislation’s approval. The administration had hoped the jobless rate would top off at 8 percent.

Romer was the administration’s public face every month when the national unemployment numbers were released – usually to bad news. She issued a statement on Friday noting the private sector created 71,000 jobs in July, not enough to lower unemployment.

Reports surrounding her departure suggest she was leaving because of the heavy presence of Summers, an economist with a reputation for less than stellar people skills, and because she was frustrated with life in Washington.

Gibbs dismissed those stories, saying Romer had been in on every critical meeting with Obama on the economy and played a key role in the White House’s economic policies. […]

So here’s the White House narrative to cover up the fact that there are big pissing matches going on inside the White House economic team, and the fact that Obama’s own economist has written a paper suggesting that her boss is leading the nation to “highly contractionary” economic ruin: Romer is quitting because she’s been working 32 hours a day (6 years divided by 1.5 years, times an average 8-hour work day).

Let’s not laugh and take it seriously for a moment. The White House economic team has worked themselves into a frazzled mess, burdened with their profound care for the average America.

Well, what about their boss, Barry Hussein?

From the GuardianUK:

As Barack Obama settles into the White House, the differences between the way the old and new presidents manage their time will begin to show. Now it is time to break the puritan fiction that the only way to achieve is to get up early and live clean.

Obama gets up hours later – aides during his campaign said he did much of his strategising after midnight. He smokes, he drinks beer while watching sports, and has mentioned keeping his regular poker night while president.

Bush showed up ready to work at 6:45AM. For Obama, it’s kind of nice if he shows up by 9:30 – and not particularly bright-eyed or bushy-tailed after the partying from the previous evening.

That economic team is working themselves to the bone. Obama couldn’t give a flying favorite-Emanuel/Blagojevich-phrase.

But staggering in to the office late in the morning at a time when useful people might be typically taking their first break of the day isn’t really enough to get the picture of contrast between those frazzled, overworked economic team members and their boss Barry Hussein. Because we haven’t taken into account for all the vacations and all the golf outings, have we?

While many Americans are cutting back on their vacation plans or eliminating them altogether, Barack Obama is setting an aspirational example for all of us. Sure, times are tough, but perhaps we can enjoy a life of leisure vicariously through our betters.

On July 16-18, the Obamas enjoyed their first summer vacation in beautiful Bar Harbor, Maine. The idyllic town has long been favorite summer getaway for the rich and powerful going back to the Gilded Age. Truly a resort fit for a king public servant.

Anticipating exhaustion from two long weeks in Washington, D.C., Michelle Obama is hosting her eldest daughter and several family friends on a “private vacation” to Spain, August 4-8. Staying at the luxurious Villa Padierna, Americans can rest easy knowing the accomodations will “pamper guests with elegance, spaciousness and a comforting array of amenities.” With three golf courses on the property, it’s quite a shame Barack must attend a party thrown in his honor by one of his billionaire friends. Despite this hardship, I’m sure Michelle will sing “Don’t Cry for Me, America”. Or at least hum a few bars. (After the spa’s Chakra Balancing treatment with Hot Stones.)

The five days back in the White House will be a horrible burden to the family. Thankfully, the Obama clan will take a third vacation, Aug. 14-15, to Florida’s Gulf Coast, following charges of hypocrisy for vacationing in Maine earlier. As any PR pro will tell you, the best response to “out of touch” accusations is to face them head on. Preferably from a balcony, sipping a mojito while watching Helios’ golden rays paint the beach in myriad shades of gold as the fiery orb slips ‘neath the azure horizon.

WASHINGTON (AP) – The White House is the place to be on Wednesdays.Since the presidency changed hands less than six weeks ago, a burst of entertaining has taken hold of the iconic, white-columned home of America’s head of state. Much of it comes on Wednesdays.

The stately East Room, where portraits of George and Martha Washington adorn the walls, was transformed into a concert hall as President Barack Obama presented Stevie Wonder with the nation’s highest award for pop music on Wednesday.

// <![CDATA[//

A week before that, the foot-stomping sounds of Sweet Honey in the Rock, a female a cappella group, filled the East Room for a Black History Month program first lady Michelle Obama held for nearly 200 sixth- and seventh-graders from around the city.

Cocktails were sipped during at least three such receptions to date, all held on Wednesdays.

And he hasn’t let up since:

President party boyThe wrong kind of leadership
By JOHN GIBSON
Last Updated: 4:15 AM, June 10, 2010

Last week’s jobs report tanked the stock market; the president took weeks to assert control of the oil spill that threatens doom on the Gulf Coast — but at the White House the Gatsby-like parties roll on as if happy days were here again.

Just yesterday, President Obama held another fun-filled White House event, a picnic for Congress members, complete with hot dogs, cold beverages and a fire pit.

All told, during the last seven weeks of spewing oil and rampant unemployment, he has frolicked and danced through three major White House music parties:

Obama’s golf outings have generated favorable reports from the media, in contrast to his predecessor, George W. Bush.

On Aug. 5, 2002, The Washington Post wrote about President Bush golfing near his parents’ home in Kennebunkport, Maine. Under the headline “Before Golf, Bush Decries Latest Deaths in Mideast,” staff writer Mike Allen described Bush as he “sprang from his golf cart at 6:15 a.m. and said he was distressed to hear about the latest suicide bombers in Israel.”

“Bush, wearing khakis and a knit shirt, was holding a driver in his gloved left hand,” Allen wrote.

“However incongruous the setting, the president plunged ahead,” Allen wrote.

And the entire country wasn’t falling apart at the time Allen took his leftwing cheap shot at Bush in the name of “journalism,” unlike what’s going on all around us today.

Blatant media hypocrisy and total disregard for anything approaching objectivity aside, the real emphasis needs to fall back on our Vacationer-in-Chief, as contrasted with his near-dead from exhaustion economic team.

There’s an ad for Direct TV that features a Russian Zillionaire. He says, “Opulence, I has it.” As he strolls leisurely along, he looks at two golden sculptures of himself, and without bothering to seriously study either he casually points a finger and says, “Zis one.”

That pampered Russian is apparently playing the roll of Obama strolling through the White House at noonish after getting home from another vacation or from attending another lavishly-opulent and taxpayer-funded party.

On this scenario, Lawrence Summers and Christina Romer were both up all night working on an economic report – according to Robert Gibbs – and Obama strolls in while they each hopefully hold up their work and says “Zis one.”

And of course, according to the stories, most of the time it’s Lawrence Summers’ report Obama points at. Because Summers can piss farther.

There’s just one difference between Obama and the post turtle – or apparently Obama’s economic team. The post turtle can actually be found at his post.

Update: In addition to the massive criticism Michelle Obama has deservedly received for her massively expensive vacation to Spain (complete with government-funded transportation and over seventy Secret Service agents), we now learn that the Obama’s are going on their FIFTH vacation since July.